CRICHTON SURVIVES HALLOWEEN AND AN ENCOUNTER WITH A COWBOY

In my day, we were happy to hollow out a swede, light a candle in it then kick the thing around the garden. Not so now America has taken a hold of our youth. 

Cynthia left me happily watching Time Team, when some blighters from the village start ringing our door bell. 

Trick or Treat? 

Well I’d have been happy to go for the trick, but I knew Cynthia had left some chocs in the kitchen so went to fetch them. Damn. Brexit had got there before me and was up on the table troughing into the packet, wrappers and all.

The mood on the door step was getting nasty by the time I’d cleared up the wreckage, so I gave them a packet of currants and some cheese footballs left over from Christmas, that I found in the pantry. Frankly they were lucky to get those imo.

Spent rest of the night with the lights off pretending to be out.

Cynthia Comments

Poor cook. I think she is beginning to lose her grip. 

She has spent all morning turning out the pantry, looking for a bag of currants. 

‘I’m so frightened I might be suffering from dimension, madam. I know they were there at Christmas,’ she said, ‘along with the cheese footballs…

I told her not to worry. Eleven months on I feel we can run to a new packet.

Inky and Sally are enduring a visit from a long-lost American cousin and we had the dubious pleasure of making up the numbers for dinner along with Bunty and Derek.

A distant aunt’s ‘liason de coeur’ with a GI during the war and subsequent emigration to the Lone Star State after hostilities ceased, brought forth this cousin with the somewhat unusual name of Walter P Nieheim. 

Well, people say everything is bigger in Texas but in this case ‘people’ would be quite wrong…Nieheim by name and knee-high by nature… he’s no more than more than five feet tall and with a complexion so pasty that one cannot believe that he has ever seen the sun, let alone been brought up on a ranch…apparently he was once a rodeo clown. 

But what he lacks in height, he certainly makes up for in girth and ego.

He regaled us for so long and so loud with his love of steer punching, hominy grits and the Lord Jesus, that I honestly thought that Sally might stab him with her hors d’oeuvre fork. You would think none of us had ever been to church…Mind you none of us had ever eaten grits so I suppose he had one over on us with that point.

I had dressed in a plaid shirt with denim trousers and even Crichton had done his best with a red, white and blue striped tie, to make the man feel at home.

Walt, as he insisted we called him, on the other hand, seemed to have made no effort at all and came to the table in a track-suit and slippers! 

Well, really! 

And dear Sally had been to so much trouble. 

Despite her bravado, I could see she was upset when he toyed with her Chicken a la King (it’s her signature dish, even though I suspect it may be made with left overs) and she expects a round of applause when she brings it in on the heated trolley. I could have wept for her. 

The ghastly man announced, in his irritating southern drawl, that he preferred good ol’ fashioned plain cooking. It made one wonder how he had managed to achieve his 54inch waist, but the rest of us tucked in gamely, and had seconds. 

I shall pay for it on the scales next week.

He seemed to have some difficulty with the cutlery and shocking table manners, preferring to eat only with a fork, and both elbows on the table. When he refused the Gevrey-Chambertin and insisted on a glass of milk, that really was the last straw. Inky was ready to explode. Walt has apparently signed the pledge.

 ‘Only decaff for me Sal, he said with a horrifying wink, when coffee was offered, ‘With all you li’l ladies here, I ain’t needin’ no further stimulation tonight…’

The mind just boggles.

We never did enquire what the P stands for but Derek whispered to me that he thought it might be Prick. I nearly choked on my Benedictine.

Crichton comments

In a rush of blood to the head, I stupidly invited Mr Nieheim to take a gun with the syndicate at Botherington on Saturday as my guest. That was before I had realised what a first-class boar he is. I could only hope he could shoot straight and that Inky would make sure he was properly kitted out or Jonny Knotte-Botherington would never let me forget it. The right for an American to bear arms does not convey any kind of ability. 

I had arranged to meet the boys for breakfast at the Dog and Carrot in Dudscombe at the usual time, but Inky and The American didn’t turn up until I was mopping up the last of my runny egg yolk with the fried bread.  They do a cracking full English…not quite as good as Cook’s, but very fair. 

Inky was furious to be missing out but tried not to show it. 

Walt, who was adorned in all sorts of tweed, showed no remorse and even less inclination to hurry up. We all know how tetchy Jonny K-B gets on a shoot day…the last thing one should do is turn up late. Douglas took pity and ordered up two bacon rolls (to go) while they dicked about adjusting Nieheim’s cartridge belt and making him do up his tie and top button, and we were off, arriving just as they were drawing for pegs.

Even though he was Inky’s relation, Walt was my guest as far as Jonny K-B was concerned and he had somehow fixed things that I would be on an adjacent peg. 

‘Thought you two might like to keep an eye on each other,’ he whispered conspiratorially. That turned out to be no bad thing in retrospect, but at the time I was rather put out. I could see Inky and Douglas sniggering together in the corner.

‘There should be plenty of good pheasants so please pick the high birds. No ground game, but please take pigeon and corvids, if it gives you pleasure. Guns in sips between drives. There will be a horn to start and finish each drive,’ said his Lordship and we moved off to the waiting trailer.

‘What’s a corvid?’ asked Walt very loudly. 

He was answered by Miles, Inky’s ten-year-old son and heir who often comes along to carry the cartridge bag. 

‘They are crows and such like Mr Nieheim. Jays, jackdaws, rooks et cetera. Don’t you see them in Texas?’

Walt wasn’t sure that they did, but promised to look out for some. 

‘Do they make good eating, young man?’

‘Delicious,’ said Miles without a flicker of a smile, ‘if we shoot any, I shall ask Mr Bromidge, he’s the keeper you know, to let you have them. I’m sure Lord Kott-Botherington would spare them as you are a visitor.’

Bravo Miles. That young man gets more like his father every day.

The first drive went smoothly enough. Walt, it turns out, is an excellent shot after all, but he will shout ‘YeeHa!’ after every one that he hits. He took a few good birds well out in front and because I knew that every eye would be on him, it rather took the heat off me and I managed to down a towering cock bird as it rocketed out of the trees. I was really rather pleased with myself and I half expected a nod of approval from our host, if not a round of applause. I didn’t get one, as every eye was on Walt who was warming to his task by the second. His blood was certainly up, and he took birds right left and centre, leaving little for me to shoot, or Tommy Freeman to his left, who was very put out. 

So as the guns lined up for the next, I took him to one side. 

‘Stick to the birds over your own peg, old chap,’ I said, nicely enough, ‘there’s no prize for the most kills you know.’ 

‘Gee, Crichton, don’t be a sore loser. I’m only taking the ones you miss,’ he laughed.

Chance would be a fine thing, I thought. 

When the horn went to end the drive. I hadn’t managed to get off a single shot. 

We broke off after the third drive for a cup of hot consommé with a splash of vodka, and chubby Mr N enjoyed it thoroughly and had seconds and thirds too, not to mention a couple of very large sausage rolls that Miles pressed on him. 

We had conveniently ‘forgotten’ that Walt is TT.

 He was looking a little shaky as we waited for the start of the fourth drive, so I offered him my shooting stick. I don’t think he’d used one before. He planted it squarely in some very muddy ground and sat down just as the first birds flew over. Gun raised, he prepared for an overhead shot and fell straight over backwards onto his great fat arse, in the mud. As his gun went off, he downed yet one more cock bird which tumbled down to hit him squarely in the face. 

I could hear sniggering from further up the line and by the time Walt had extricated the shaft of the shooting stick which was buried a full 18 in the mud, the horn had blown again for the end of the drive and we were all off for lunch.

Over a very fine steak and kidney pie back at Botherington Hall, we plied him with a strong bloody Mary to sooth his nerves (it’s really only tomato juice, Mr Neihiem, says Miles) and there after he drank only ginger beer…home-made and very potent. We left him snoozing by the library fire (probably just a touch of jet lag, we told our host) and had an excellent afternoon with some of the best birds of the season.

We collected him at the end of the day each with a brace of birds. 

Pheasants for Inky and myself, a jay and a hooded crow for Walter. 

He was delighted and tipped the keeper a hundred pounds, so no real harm done.

Pheasants        211

Others             3         

         1 jay 

         1crow 

         1 temperance pledge